![steve vai passion and warfare album art steve vai passion and warfare album art](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/81/df/0041df81.jpg)
Those words arrive at what may be Vai’s greatest composition of the era, “For The Love of God.” Recorded while the guitarist was in the middle of a 10-day fast, it was nothing less than a devotional on the level of something composed by John Coltrane or John McLaughlin. The music, painstakingly organized and performed with precision, walks that line measure-by-measure all the way to the end when Coverdale reappears to tell us that we’re “ Walking the fine line between Pagan and Christian.” David Coverdale’s voice at the end of “Liberty” reminded us that we’re human but still animals. “Erotic Nightmares,” “The Animal” and “Answers” toy with the question of whether man is savage or tame. So the album’s first side pulled the listener between the two worlds. The album arrived during a time when cassettes were very much in vogue and the idea of an album side still prevailed. A suggestion that, perhaps, the horned one has the better tunes? His guitar is aimed toward the hellish flames of the underworld. This world is writ large on the album’s cover: angels circle and protect Vai above, demons congregate at his feet below. In many ways it recalls the purity of Flex-Able this is music for the pure of heart, those who believe in a world populated by aliens, angels, demons and a mischievous God who allows us to work out all the confusing bits on our own. Its insistence on freedom, a theme revisited throughout, comes off like a new take on “School’s Out.” You can imagine a generation of budding guitar enthusiasts waiting to get out of the classroom and into the woodshed. Passion and Warfare was released with perfect timing, especially opening with “Liberty,” a celebratory, almost sentimental track that nearly reaches into the painfully naïve. By early 1990 it was clear that he had to make a record that bested the competition and lived up to his own reputation.
![steve vai passion and warfare album art steve vai passion and warfare album art](https://www.vai.com/guitarimg/SV342/SV342-01.jpg)
As he became a fixture in the omnipresent guitar mags of the day, where he espoused the virtues of the Lydian mode and took readers inside his 10-hour guitar workouts, his debut became a fixture in every budding guitar player’s collection. There were obtuse love songs, a track about drug addiction and an ode to extra-terrestrials rendered with a childlike sense of wonder.īy the time Vai joined Whitesnake in 1989, Flex-Able had picked up steam. What might have been pop music in someone else’s hands was rendered almost entirely alien in Vai’s. His 1984 solo effort Flex-Able had plenty of guitar on it, including the quintessential six-string number, “The Attitude Song,” but it also had vocals. Vai, who was about to join Whitesnake, had not yet made an instrumental guitar record.
![steve vai passion and warfare album art steve vai passion and warfare album art](https://www.cyberfret.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/steve-vai-flexable-cover.jpg)
Suddenly, instrumental rock guitar became fashionable for the first time in over a decade. He left Roth’s employ after the keyboard-heavy Skyscraper, around the same time his former guitar teacher Joe Satriani released Surfing with the Alien. With an increasing profile and an appearance in the film Crossroads, Vai was no longer a player that people simply talked about he was a player that people heard. He exploded the technique further during the intro to “Yankee Rose” with Roth. By mimicking his boss’s patented Sprechstimme (“speech song”) in pieces such as “The Jazz Discharge Party Hats” and “The Dangerous Kitchen” he’d made listeners believe that a guitar could actually talk. Vai had changed the function of blues call-and-response during his tenure in Frank Zappa’s band. He replaced Malmsteen in Alcatrazz, and in 1985 recorded the little-heard hard rock effort Disturbing the Peace, shortly before joining Roth’s band for Eat ‘em and Smile. Though Vai might have become a star in his own time, both Malmsteen and Van Halen may have helped his career. By the time Malmsteen issued his first solo LP in 1984, Van Halen had turned his attention to keyboards, having tasted success with a guest turn on Michael Jackson’s Thriller and his band’s sights set on similar heights in pop stardom. With its emphasis on technique and classical influence, shred might not have happened without the Dutch-born prodigy. Yngwie Malmsteen’s neo-classical wares helped shape shred, though he would never experience the mass appeal of Edward Van Halen. Vai was a singular voice on his instrument, though he had competition. Upon its release in 1990, his album Passion and Warfare changed the face of rock guitar forever. If guitar shred was entering its twilight during the ‘80s, Steve Vai was supremely unaware.